No Shit?! Plunging in on Elimination Communication!

I have a hippie friend named Aurora who I love dearly, we share the same passions for being ridiculously Earth-conscious, being comically frugal and being referred to as “crunchy af”! 🙂 She’s my play-wife. Our kids are 16 months apart and Aurora has been hella influential in the way I have incorporated crunchiness since even before baby’s birth (she’s the one that started me on the home birth kick and encouraged my vegan pregnancy!). When Aurora told me that she was doing Elimination Communication (EC) aka infant potty-training aka baby peeing and pooping in the toilet before they can even walk and talk, I KNEW I’d be following her down this yellow brick road.

Last week, Aurora gifted me her 2 year old daughter’s former potty, a two-toned hot pink Minnie Mouse potty complete with a lid (he needs to learn y’all!) and a hand-le that shouts “Hip Hip Hooray!” when you “flush”! This potty is a epitome of our relationship! For one, t’s a hand-me-down so no waste and no having to purchase any new plastic items. Two, it was FREE and three, we’re freakin potty-training our infants, well, Aurora’s on her way out! Before I left with my Disney donation, Aurora advised me to start watching for Ro’s cues before and after he peed and to start sitting him on the toilet after every feeding. Check!

This week, I decided to go next level and went down the internet rabbit hole of EC and discovered a woman named Andrea Olson, author of Go Diaper Free, she seems to have this stuff down to a simplified science. I mean, I’m definitely aware that I’ll be teaching a new human to use a toilet, so it will be hit or miss some days, but this lady has 4 kids and they’ve all been out of diapers before the age of 2, so basically I’m going to follow all of her advice! When I read the statistic that most kids in the world are out of diapers around the age of 1 and in America the average baby is in diapers until the age of 3, I was sold on the idea, I mean duh! For the Earth, for our budget and because I believe that this is possible and I’d rather do it now than later when work picks back up or I have another bebe on the way! One of my favorite lines from her website re: our kids and their poo, [do we] “teach them to ignore their instincts, train our kids to poo and pee on themselves and pretend it isn’t there, give them the huge responsibility to train themselves out of something we’ve trained them into? Do we dishonor the Earth by stuffing Her with poo-filled Pampers?” Right?! Because no matter how they label disposable diapers “Pure Pampers”, they don’t break down and they’re mountains of them in our landfills, full of biodegradable waste. Ugh! Makes me so mad! (Side note: use cloth diapers people!) Andrea also shares that in the 1950s, it was common for babies to be potty-trained by 9 months, moms weren’t gonna hand wash those cloth diapers forever! Hell no! I know I’m not about to. Go to Andrea’s site, she has some outstanding free resources, plus monthly q&as and a fantastic blog! If you’re interested in finding out more, seek her out, she’s also on IG. I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface and I feel confident that if I follow her advice, we will be successful!

TODAY, I decided to start putting babes on the toilet for all “pottytunities” as Andrea suggests AND MY BABY PEED IN THE TOILET y’all!! He is not sitting on his Disney throne yet, he’s still wobbly in his sitting and it’s not comfortable for him, so I’ve just been straddling the adult toilet backwards and sitting him in my lap with his thighs in my hands, penis pointing down while I let him stomp on the toilet lid and rip up toilet paper, it’s his new thing and it totally keeps him occupied while we sit there from 10-20 minutes. His incredible first pee happened on our 3rd time on the toilet after we came in from walking the dog, I took him out of his carrier, (a “pottytunity”!) and we sat down, he peed within 2 minutes! I may have gotten a little on my pants, but WHO CARES?! MY BABY PEED IN THE TOILET! I won’t get too crazy excited, I know there’s more consistent work to do and I am all for it! Ro is 7 months and my goal is to have him out of diaper dependence by 15 months! Can it be done?! Stay tuned!